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In 2003, the Workers’ Party took federaloffice in Brazil on an agenda of social inclusion and popular participation. This paper explores attempts to implement that agenda in big infrastructure projects in the Amazon: the BR-163 road and the Belo Monte dam. We argue that overlapping inequalities (between social groups, within the bureaucracy and between territorial centre and periphery) result in uneven state capacities for implementing projects in the Amazon. This framework helps explain why the government has moved much faster in building infrastructure than in implementing participatory social and environmental programmes that would benefit affected local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]